


A Dance for My Best Girl

by HairandBriscola



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Out Of Character Steve Rogers, Out of Character Peggy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-08 13:23:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18624127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HairandBriscola/pseuds/HairandBriscola
Summary: An alternate ending for Avengers: Endgame. Spoilers.After returning the Infinity Stones, Steve goes back for that dance with Peggy. But he doesn't stay.





	A Dance for My Best Girl

**Author's Note:**

> Note at the end. Enjoy.

The door bell sounded with a peel as Steve pressed it. It rang.

And it rang. And for a horrible second, it seemed as if it would never stop.

How long were doorbells supposed to last? Steve couldn’t recall, not with his heart thudding in his ears. When even was the last time he rang a doorbell? Certainly not in the last five years at least.

Cars lazily rolled past. Windows and roofs rolled down on shiny, new cars. Distantly, Steve heard kids calling out to each other. 

A ball hit near his feet, a baseball sitting there innocently enough on the floorboards of Peggy’s white porch.

Oh. It only just now hit Steve. All the things he had given up. All the things that he could have had. With Peggy. A whole life of forgotten possibilities flashed before his eyes. The gravity of it all seemed to magnify with time – with going back in time. Steve couldn’t recall the last time the weight of what he lost caused him to lose the ability to breathe.

“Hey there, mister! Could you throw our ball back?”

When Steve looked up, he almost did a double take. Two boys, roughed up around the edges, looked back at him. One had unruly blonde locks, the other brown. The blond boy had a blue Brooklyn Dodgers cap sitting askew on his head. Standing a full four inches taller, the brown-haired boy had his arm slung around the shoulders of the other. It was eerie, the way their eyes reflected back at Steve, recalling days long before the war was brought to his childhood. 

Steve tossed the ball back, enamored at the way the baseball never seemed to change. Enamored with the way sunlight felt warm, no matter the year. Enamored with the way kids could always be friends, despite everything else.

Silently, the door cracked open behind him. Brown eyes took in this half-remembered silhouette in front of her. Hair, a shock of blonde; shoulders, strong and proud; hands – she recalled the way they had felt on her cheek. 

“Steve?”

His head snapped around, the sound of his name on her tongue after all these years shocking his heart into stillness. 

\-- 

Peggy pulled a whistling kettle off the stove, before pouring its contents into a tea cup for Steve and then herself. The odd pair sat at a brightly lit kitchen table, the butter yellow of the walls glowing golden with the afternoon. 

Silence ate at them, for a moment. The urge to look into the other eyes was strong, but not enough to spur them into action. Instead Peggy thought back to that moment on the porch, just a moment ago. Steve had looked at her, the lines around his eyes betraying just how much older her gentle giant seemed, while the sunshine on his skin and the tender smile on his mouth looked just like the golden boy Peggy remembered from before. From before her life truly changed. This sudden intrusion of reality took the breath from her mouth.

“How did – I don’t understand. It’s been five years, Steve. I thought you were dead.”

“I’m sorry, Peggy. I can’t, I don’t –”

“Where have you been all this time? Why didn’t you come back?” Peggy interjected, not allowing Steve to finish his awful apology. 

“Peggy, please believe me when I say that I can’t talk about it, even though I wish I could.”

Peggy sat ram straight at Steve’s pleading tone. She finally looked up at him. The blue of his eyes seemed to transcend time. Peggy could almost see a fleck of green right around the center. The two souls seemed to recognize a part of themselves in one another.

“Why are you here, Steve?”

“I’m here for that dance, Peggy.”

A half-laugh left her mouth with a burst of air. Peggy’s eyes welled-up, recalling that night years past. The way her heart had felt like it had gone down with his plane, deep under layers of ice. “Steve. It’s been a long time.”

“It’s been forever. But I finally have the right partner here in front of me. And I don’t want to wait anymore.”

A hand reached out for Peggy’s, palm open in invitation. The look on Steve’s face spelled out soft-hearted eagerness, a boyish smile danced across his face as he led her from her chair and into the living room.

Peggy stood silently, dazed and breathless, looking on this man that she had thought had been taken from her. And now he was tuning her radio for something for them to dance to. When he returned to her side, Peggy had dissolved into joyous laughter, a piece inside her settling into itself. Steve looked on her face as if she were the dawn, his smile overwhelmed with contentment.

“Margaret Elizabeth Carter, are you laughing at me?” He teased. Pulling her out into the middle of her floor, a hand resting at the curve of her spine, Steve twirled Peggy around just as he promised. 

“Only always, Captain Rogers.” Peggy relaxed into him, reveling in the way his chest felt beneath her cheek as they swayed back and forth. 

They danced for a long moment, uninterrupted by the passing of time. Songs faded into one another as the light faded into dusk. Peggy’s hair turned bronze beneath the warm light and Steve felt laughter come to him for the first time in a very long time. Time stretched between them, clearing away some of the cobwebs left in their chests. They melted into each other. Steve’s head rested on top of Peggy’s, finally fitting together as they always knew they would.  
Peggy’s thoughts turned languidly to honey and her mouth felt thick, so when she finally spoke, the words were low and slow coming, but she needed to speak the words that had started to eat at her in the stillness.

“Why are you actually here, Steve?”

“I – I want to stay. With you, Peggy.”

“Stay? What do you mean stay?”

“I mean …” Steve swallowed hard, racking his brain for the right words. “I didn’t just disappear. That day. I went down with the ship, into the ice. But I didn’t die. Dr. Erskine did a little too good of a job for that.” 

Peggy pulled back, searching his face for something that would explain the nonsense that he was saying. Steve looked back, beseeching and desperate. He looked like a man starving.

“I slept, Peggy. For years. Until they found me and woke me up.”

“But we, we weren’t looking for you, Steve? We… we couldn’t find you. We thought you were lost.”

“Not you. They found me, 70 years from now. In the future, Peggy. I was there for years. I fought for years. But I found my way back to you.”

The couple stood still in the middle of the living room. A living room that could be theirs. In a house that could be theirs. Living the life that could be theirs. Marriage. Kids. Grandkids. Swinging on their porch when they are 80, still as in love as they are right now. 

Peggy raised a hand to his face, her mouth transforming into a firm line even as her eyes softened. “You need to go back, Steve.” 

“What? No. I came back for you. So that we can be together.”

“The war is over, Steve. We finished the things we set out to do.” Steve turned her head away from her. “And you’ve been away from here for such a long time. This isn’t your life anymore. You have to go back.”

“I was a man out of time, Peggy. The world is not the same. I have spent so much time where I don’t belong.” Peggy reached back to him, pulling back into the grip of her arms. A large hand went to cup her cheek. “You are where I belong, Peggy.”

Peggy pressed a soft kiss into his palm. “I love you. But you have a whole new life, with new people. And they need you. They need your heart. They need your strength. They need you in a way that this time doesn’t.”

Their foreheads pressed together, a new kind of mourning stirring between them. 

“You were meant for more than this life, Steve Rogers.”

“You are my best girl, Peggy. Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! You can call me Briscola. This is my first work ever. I hope you enjoyed it! Comments always welcome!


End file.
